@ahriman22: I picked up a beta key today from here. http://www.videogamer.com/features/competition/15-01-2010-952.html#formentry

Gotta admit after watching all 3 of the videos it made me want to give the beta a try myself when previously I had no intention to. I'm still miffed they ignore the bugs and glitches they stumble across because it's only a few weeks from release.

@Buzzkill: the WoW beta had scarlet monastery as the highest level instance, along with the Forsaken characters tagged as undead instead of humanoids. MMOs really do change a lot when released to the general public and within their first 1-3 months are patched their asses off

" Number 3 is the first video for star trek online I've seen so far. I'm also highly critical of games. ( the reason I like giantbomb, they are too) Brad really let me down on this one. When his science officer glitched out the entire mission on terrible pathing, he just ignored it and it cost him the mission. Not even the way points he set for his away team would get her un-stuck from the glitch. This is something I would expect giantbomb to point out for the fans and it's pretty sad they did not. The next time I watch a video on giantbomb I'll have to think to myself.... "did they ignore that bug on purpose because they got paid to?" "

@Buzzkill Release might only be a few weeks away but this is still deep in the throws of beta and these kind of bugs are really to be expected. We'll see them weeks into launch too. Cryptic are trying to do something original with the away team members and if it comes off it will make this game much more accessible to non-hardcore gamers when it comes to instances and the like. It's the beauty of MMO games where this kind of thing will only get better as the game gets older.

I've been playing the beta for a few days and I gotta say Brad is terrible at this game. He goes into battle at full impulse which leaves your ship drained of power so you're pretty much shooting blanks and not regenerating shields.

@Sanious: Sure, there's just a very very strong chance that nothing will change from beta to launch. Did anyone here play Champions from beta to release, that recent game from the same developer? I got into it 3 weeks before launch, my brother got into it several weeks prior to that. I continued to play it for about 2 1/2 weeks after launch. Changes? Some nerfs, some buffs, no real change to the way the game functioned other than a massive increase in the cost of choice-resets / retcons that infuriated the player base as wave after wave of nerfs and buffs washed over them. The main reason for the massive increase was so that you couldn't see all the powers on one character, but would instead have to level up each power set with a different character to see what they offered, thus ensuring you spent longer as a subscriber.

Looking at ST:O now, here's the facts you can't even see in the video. Your abilities in ship combat are determined by your bridge officers, everyone starts with the same ship which they will be using for the first 20+ hours / 40 missions, and the main difference between ships is the numbers of bridge officers they can have. So, every character has the same choice (~2 to 3 choices each type) of abilities for the first 20 hours no matter what their class is. You can have more than three officers, but only one of each type can be slotted at once in the first 20 hours in the newbie ship that everyone gets.

Probably just as well every character is identical at the start, since you only have 2 character slots until you buy more slots from the store, and a Klingon alt (earned at level 6) would take up one of those slots. Pretty much everything else is pretty evident in the video, and entirely true. Will it change on launch? I'd eat my hat. If they had some awesome super-duper launch patch on the back burner, why would they want to look THIS bad to 100,000 beta keyers?

Does the game really change once you get to differentiate into one of the three ship-class types? Hell if I know. I'm not running on the treadmill for 20 hours to get my first carrot. It certainly won't help that progress-dulling death penalties of some kind will exist after launch. Everyone I've teamed up with has found it typical that to complete some of their missions, the only way is to die repetitiously over and over again and slowly whittle down enemy fleets from smallest to biggest, such is the balance of the mission system right now. If that remains so, it could take 40 hours once death penalties are incurred.

I loved Cryptic for City of Heroes, and there was a lot to love about Champions (I still consider going back), but I find little to like about ST:O other than the fairly good (but repeated to the point of nauseum in 80% of missions!) ship combat.

It really irritates me that alot of GB (usually just Brad, Ryan, and Jeff) constantly talk up their affection or knowledge for Star Trek, as if they're such great fans, but their appreciation of Star Trek doesn't go beyond a handful of the movies and TNG. They're not Star Trek fans, they're just TNG fans.

It really irritates me that alot of GB (usually just Brad, Ryan, and Jeff) constantly talk up their affection or knowledge for Star Trek, as if they're such great fans, but their appreciation of Star Trek doesn't go beyond a handful of the movies and TNG. They're not Star Trek fans, they're just TNG fans.

I really hope that 3 years later, you have learned to get over yourself.